Bold or brave, Madonna is an extraordinary star

Just a mere look at Madonna and a taste of her music might give one the sense that here is a show-business superstar with an extraordinary background. Her willingness to discuss her life story, including a brutal sexual assault, adds to the special character of the best-selling female artist of all time. It doesn’t matter that she lives in a cultural time and environment that can help ease the recollection and experience of being raped. She is brave and inspirational anyway.

Madonna is controversial in many respects. However, sharing the most painful experiences with the rest of the world is noble. It’s common for celebrities to talk about tough or rough lives, but for a woman to come out and tell us how she was dragged up to the roof of a building with a knife at her back and then raped is nothing short of courageous.

With Madonna, brave and bold sometimes overlap. These virtues formed the foundation of her outstanding career. Her song “Like a Virgin” and its original music video enraged some conservatives, who said it promoted premarital sex and undermined family values. But the entertainment industry benefited from the song’s revolutionary effect. Moralists frown on her astonishing career path, but admirers see a truly liberated woman whose contribution to the arts has broadened its boundaries.

The “Material Girl” is much more than a pop singer. She is a songwriter, author, actress, entrepreneur and philanthropist. If she had given up on her dream after everything New York City threw at her decades ago, not to mention a harsh family life before that, she could have become none of these things. It required something far greater than luck to go through those early days and become what she is now. 

She has always drawn inspiration from Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, a daring non-conformist who cared not at all what people thought of her. When depressed, Madonna would look at a postcard portrait of Kahlo she had taped to her wall, and her inner strength would be refuelled. One woman made a name for herself by painting self-portraits because “I was alone often and I was the subject I knew best.” The other woman also put a lot of herself into her work because, “If Frida Kahlo could do it, so could I.” 

The rape incident was disclosed in an essay Madonna contributed to Harper’s Bazaar magazine. This wasn’t the first time she’d talked about it, though. The pop icon first revealed the assault in a 1995 interview promoting her book “Sex”. She had been young and trusting of people, she said at the time. The experience made her “much more street-smart and savvy”.

Having contributed so much to the arts and entertainment, Madonna is giving inspiration beyond her music, with a life story that many celebrities would rather take with them to the grave. And she is doing so simply by being herself, without patronising or preaching. We cannot say we’re touched by her for the very first time, but we do hope her latest “Madonna” act, controversial as it may seem to some, won’t be her last.